A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks
By Andy Gill, Kevin Odegard
An in-depth look at the creation of one of Bob Dylan's most celebrated albums,
- Amazon Sales Rank: #75664 in Books
- Published on: 2005-03-01
- Released on: 2005-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 264 pages
From Publishers Weekly
This is a solid look at the background to the making of Blood on the Tracks, considered one of Bob Dylan's greatest recordings since its release 30 years ago. Gill is a skilled British music journalist, as is Odegard, who was one of the Minneapolis session musicians Dylan used to redo five songs recorded three months earlier in New York City. The authors look at the album they believe "set a new benchmark in confessional songwriting" by looking at it from every possible angle: Dylan's musical decision to return to folk after his electric and country periods; the disintegration of his marriage to his first wife, Sara, in the wake of Dylan's various affairs; his strained relationship with his younger brother, David, who helped remake the album in Minneapolis. While the authors do give a truly complete sense of the background that produced the album, much of this has been covered in far more detail in such books as Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited (which the authors cite) and will be familiar to all Dylan fans. Fortunately, the authors shine throughout the rest of the book, which presents an enormous amount of previously unreported detail about the making of the album—down to the kind of microphones that were used. Their descriptions of the energy and enthusiasm of these musicians will make even the most hardcore Dylan fan hear Blood on the Tracks anew.
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From Booklist
In 1974, Bob Dylan broke a streak of wan and uninspired recordings with Blood on the Tracks, composed in the wake of the breakup of the singer-songwriter's 12-year marriage. The album was immediately hailed by fans and critics as one of his best. After cutting blood with a group of crack New York studio musicians, Dylan redid most of its songs in Minneapolis with a group of obscure local players, including coauthor Odegard, and the versions of "Shelter from the Storm" and "Idiot Wind" on the album are from the remake recordings. Exhaustive interviews with musicians from both sessions allow a detailed chronicle of the sessions and provide a harrowing portrayal of working with the mercurial, hard-to-please Dylan. Lengthy passages describing the early-'70s cultural and musical milieu and the sometimes-stormy relationship between Dylan and his brother, producer of the Minneapolis sessions, mostly just pad the text out to book length. Blood on the Tracks remains a high point of Dylan's career, and its many devotees will relish this thorough account of its making. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"So fascinatingly behind-the-scenes that it will make you listen to the album as if you've never heard it before." -- Esquire
Essential for fans of this album.
For those who don't know, Blood on the Tracks was recorded in NYC in late 1974. Dylan then re-recorded 5 of the tracks with local Minnesota musicians and released the album in 1975. It went on to be one of his most successful albums ever. It's a great treat to have one book focus on one classic album. This book goes into every possible detail of the recording of these 10 songs, from who they were written about, how and where they were recorded, to how the musicians were chosen. There is a lot of detail into the actual recording from the musicians who played on both the NY versions and the Minnesota versions which is pretty interesting b/c some of them did not like Dylan's recording process while some of them thrived in the improvisational nature of it. The most interesting piece is hearing how the Minnesota musicians feel 25+ years later about not being credited in the liner notes--some are upset, some are surprised, and some just don't care. This is a terrific book and I can only hope that similar books will be written, focusing specifically on Blonde on Blonde or Bringing it all back home.
Are we rolling, Bob?
Books about the "Making Of" an album seem to be coming out with increasing frequency. Ashley Kahn has written two excellent books about the making of classic albums: "Kind of Blue" and "A Love Supreme", and among the albums in the rock cannon deserving of this sort of treatment, "Blood on the Tracks" has to rank pretty high. It is an iconic recording, with a great back story: by far Dylan's most confessional work, he recorded two versions: one in New York, with Phil Ramone producing, and then, after deciding he wasn't satisfied with that, a second, with uncredited musicians in Minneapolis. The version that was ultimately released has some of the New York tracks, but is mostly the Minnesota sessions. We have access to some of the alternate, New York tracks (including a version of "Simple Twist of Fate" that I had not known about, on the "Jerry McGuire" soundtrack)-- the lyrics differ slightly, and the sound overall is more introspective and intimate. What would the original have been like?
Regrettably, the book is not up to the standard Kahn has established for others working in this genre. When it focuses on the task at hand-- the making of the album, what went on during the sessions, the response to the record-- it is interesting stuff, albeit a little bit more technical than anyone probably cares about. I suppose the microphones that were used, and the makes of tape decks, and the brand of tape are interesting in a way, but not really so very interesting as to merit inclusion in an already thin book that has been puffed up with stuff about Nixon and Vietnam that reads like it was cribbed from some news magazine's end of year wrap-up. I'm really looking for more stuff like the fact that Mick Jagger was in the booth getting wasted while the steel guitar parts were being overdubbed. Or the thoughts of the musicians as they worked through this material. Or the backgrounds of the Minneapolis guys, who were, it turns out, local jazz musicians. Or the story about taking "Tangled Up in Blue" up a key, to A, forcing Dylan to sing at the outside of his range, and lending the song a haunted quality missing from the earlier take-- or subsequent live versions.
We probably know as much as we ever will about Dylan's personal life from the songs themselves, although some of the gossipy bits are interesting-- I enjoyed the stuff about the Columbia A&R woman he seems to have written "You're Going To Make Me Lonesome When You Go" was written about (so that's where Ashtabula is!). There is enough interesting new information here to make a worthwhile, in depth magazine article. The rest is so plainly filler that is actually annoying. I never fell for "Self Portrait", and I was never fool enough to buy "Dylan"-- the album of "Self Portrait" out-takes, but buying this comes close.
The fascinating story behind Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks"
Last night I attended "Blood on the Tracks Live" at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis, " at which Kevin Odegard and the other uncredited Twin cities musicians who recorded with Dylan 30 years ago played the entire album live (some of the band members and some invited guest artists, such as Mary Lee Kortes of Mary Lee's Corvette, did the singing). Eric Weissberg was also in attendance, so the NYC contingent was represented as well. "A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks" is really the first book on Dylan that I have read, even though he is a native of the Zenith City (I was out on the deck grilling listening to his concert with Paul Simon when Dylan pointed out he had been born over the side of the hill), so none of this was old hat to me. This was also the first book about the making of an album so I was fascinated by the details: learning how Odegard's suggestion for changing the key for "Tangled Up in Blue" made such a difference in the vocals is an example of the memorable detail that made this book worth the reading.
The setting is thirty years ago, when Dylan's marriage to his first wife Sara Lowndes was falling apart and he recorded "Blood on the Tracks," considered by many to be one of the greatest breakup albums of all time. "Rolling Stone" magazine listed it as #16 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time List, putting it behind "Highway 612 Revisited" (#4) and "Blonde on Blonde" (#9) in terms of the Dylan oeuvre. The songs were all written in two weeks and originally recorded in just a week with the bluegrass band Deliverance in September of 1974. However, in December of 1974 Dylan played the album for his brother David Zimmerman in Minneapolis, who urged recutting some of the songs with unknown local musicians, thus setting up the great debate over which sessions yielded the greater glory. For the record (pun intended) the five Minneapolis tracks were "Tangled Up in Blue," "You're a Big Girl Now," "Idiot Wind," "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," and "If You See Her, Say Hello." However, because the album covers had already been printed, Odegard and the rest (drummer Bill Berg, bassist Billy Peterson, guitarist Chris Weber, keyboard player Gregg Inhofer, and mandolinist Peter Ostroushko) did not get credit.
I also found it interesting to reconsider the album as setting "a new benchmark in confessional songwriting," because I have never really thought of "Blood on the Track" in those terms. I had known that Dylan repeatedly dismissed the idea that this album provided great insights into his psyche, but then that is not exactly the sort of thing you would expect a writer to easily confess to anyway. After all, he once introduced "Tangled Up in Blue" onstage as taking ten years to live and two years to write. For me the lyricism was always the main attraction. Ironically killing time before the concert we went to go see the less than worthy film "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" in which the title character gushes on about her rock star idol who is the greatest poet since Shakespeare; I have always considered Dylan a legitimate poet and would just point to the titles of songs like "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Simple Twist of Fate" as being emblematic of his stature as a lyricist.
Consequently, since "A Simple Twist of Fate" the book focuses more on the musical part of the equation. Specifics on chords and what key the harmonica is in are pretty much lost on me, but Odegard and his co-author, journalist Andy Gill, take pains to put such things in terms that neophytes like me can appreciate. For those who are interested in how current events and personal biography work their way into music attention is paid to that side of the creative process as well, although obviously Odegard is primarily concerned with what happened in the studio. The idea that "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" could be done in one take boggles the mind.
The end result for me is more of an interest in reading more about the nuts and bolts of the act of creation for other great albums than in wanting to read more about Dylan. The MC at the show last night was doing a nostalgic trip down memory lane, asking the audience to remember what it was like the first time they heard "THE ALBUM," and when he pulled the LP out of the brown paper bag it was "Sgt. Pepper." Of course it is now sadly a pair of Beatles too late to really get the full story on that particular classic album, but I am sure we can all think of some other treasured albums that gets into this sort of detail and not the shallow skimming we get on VH-1 specials.
Final Note: Best songs in the concert? Clearly "Idiot Wind" with vocals by Adam Levy of the Honeydogs. The encore piece, when everybody came on stage to do "Tangled Up in Blue" again comes in second.
